Avoiding error when using rename in dplyr and column doesn't exist

Question

Is there a clever way to use the rename function in dplyr when in some instances the column to be renamed doesn\'t exist?

For example, I would like the following not to

Answer 1

First, define a list with your column names you want to rename in a data frame df.

columnNamesToRename <-
    list(
      newColumnName1 = "oldColumnName1",
      newColumnName2 = "oldColumnName2"
    )

Next, remove the elements of the list, which have a column name as their name, but is not a column name of your data frame:

columnNamesToRename.WhichAreColumnNamesInTibble <-
columnNamesToRename[columnNamesToRename %in% intersect(
  unlist(columnNamesToRename),
  colnames(df)
)]

Then, you can rename the column names using the named list columnNamesToRename.WhichAreColumnNamesInTibble:

df.WithRenamedColumnNames <-
    df %>% dplyr::rename(!!!columnNamesToRename.WhichAreColumnNamesInTibble)